of English literature is appalling; and yet it is impossible properly to
study a given work of a given author without some knowledge of the
background against which that particular writer stands. I have,
therefore, sketched the politics, society, and literature of the age in
which Dryden lived, and during which he gave to the world his _Palamon
and Arcite_. In the critical comments of the introduction I have
contented myself with little more than hints. That particular line of
study, whether it concerns the poet's style, his verse forms, or the
possession of the divine instinct itself, can be much more
satisfactorily developed by the instructor, as the student's knowledge
of the poem grows.

It is certainly a subject for congratulation that so many youth will be
introduced, through the medium of Dryden's crisp and vigorous verse, to
one of the tales of Chaucer. May it now, as in his own century,
accomplish the poet's desire, and awaken in them appreciative admiration
for the old bard, the best story-teller in the English language.


G. E. E. CLINTON, CONN., July 26, 1897.

INTRODUCTION.

THE BACKGROUND.


The fifty years of Dryden's literary production just fill the last half
of the seventeenth century. It was a period bristling with violent
political and religious prejudices, provocative of strife that amounted
to revolution. Its social life ran the gamut from the severity of the